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The good example - Learning analytics
Enhancing the quality of teaching
In brief
There is a growing interest for examining the potential of LA in relation to supporting teachers’ pedagogical practices. Among other things, a movement has arisen within the field of LA that focuses on ‘formative’ analytics and is based on the educational research into effective feedback (Sharples et al., 2016).
”One of the largest challenges for learning analytics research and practice still lies ahead of us, and that one substantial and immediate challenge is how to put the power of learning analytics into the hands of teachers” (Reinties, B. et al., 2016, s. 2).
LA as a starting point for reflection on learning design According to Assistant Professor Anne-Mette Nortvig from Aalborg University, teachers can benefit from experimenting with the use of LA to gain knowledge on the effect of the individual components of their learning design. In the latest edition of Læring og Medier (LOM), she describes her experiences with LA as a starting point for reflection on the learning design of blended learning courses on a Master’s programme at AAU. In one module, 2 lecture videos were posted on YouTube as part of the preparation for the in-class teaching. The students were asked to stop one of the videos while watching it to take a quiz and ask reflective questions via the voting tool, Socrative. Subsequently, the teacher followed up on the questions and this was well received by the students. Through data from YouTube, the quiz in Socrative and conversations with students, Nortvig obtained a good insight into the students’ behaviour when watching lecture videos and into the benefit of using LA for the evaluation and further development of her learning designs. LA in Blackboard (Bb) The primary source of data within LA is still the learning platforms of the educational institutions. At SDU, teachers can keep track of students’ behaviour on course sites in Blackboard in terms of time spent, missed deadlines, last access to the course, number of words produ-ced in wikis and discussion forums, videos watched, etc. Simple, but effective indicators of how well students will perform on their studies (see, inter alia, the JISC report Learning Analytics in Higher Education from 2016). If students are to access their own learning data in Bb, it is necessary to invest in the more sophisticated tool Blackboard Analytics that can perform analyses across courses and visualises the students’ learning data via so-called dashboards.
Via a technology called ‘relative audience retention’, YouTube creates statistics on user behaviour when watching the individual videos. Among other things, data are generated on number of views, time spent watching the individual videos and whether users pause them along the way. An increasing number of studies on students’ viewing patterns are made in the field of educational research (Nortvig, 2016). Through the myMEDIA-tab, teachers are able to access statistics about students’ use of videos on courses in Blackboard.
Contact Pernille Stenkil Hansen 6550 1076
[email protected] SDU Centre for Teaching and Learning Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense M Entrance H by the SDU Swimming Pool - Directory March 2017
SDU CENTRE FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING
